MIAMI, March 15 (UPI) -- Although momentum and public opinion against the Florida ban on gay adoptions appeared to build this week, chances of abolishing the law soon still don't look good.
The ACLU is confident it will happen, but can't promise it will happen this year or next.
"This ban is going to fall eventually," Florida ACLU Director Howard Simon said Friday. "I can't tell you it's going to fall as a result of our efforts in the courts or repeal in the Legislature in the next session. But the movement in that direction in the advancement of human rights is inevitable."
Gov. Jeb Bush's office has not indicated any change in posture toward the ban.
"Florida is currently abiding by a law that's been in effect since 1977 and there's a court case pending," said Elizabeth Hirst, a spokeswoman in the governor's public affairs office.
Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives Tom Feeney has said he has no interest in changing the laws, and most legislators willing to speak out say that adoption of children by gay couples would be harmful.
The issue is also in the courts. In August, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King upheld the ban, passed by the 1977 Legislature. The ACLU has appealed it to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Simon said the state still has time to make its response, but he is hoping oral arguments can be heard this summer with a ruling by the end of the year.
But he also said it's time for the governor and the Legislature to take action. He said nearly 90,000 people have e-mailed Bush and urged repeal.
"It's past time for the governor and the state Legislature to stop looking at the courts to take them off the hook and step up to the plate and recognize that these are old prejudices," Simon said.
Anthony Verdugo, chairman of the Miami-Dade Christian Coalition, said the organization has not yet come up with any strategy to fight the anti-ban movement, but it definitely opposes it.
"Our position is that we support the law as it stands. We believe the best environment in which to raise a child is with a father and a mother," he said.
He said he had no idea how it would all turn out.
Both sides say they can trot out studies supporting their point of view.
Those fighting the ban say there are 3,500 children awaiting in Florida and many gay couples would love to adopt them.
Verdugo said that contention is only an effort to play on the sympathies of the community.
"In reality, if the system in Florida could be revised to make it easier, Florida couples could adopt more children. The issue here is red tape," he said.
The Florida Legislature passed the ban with the help of a celebrity, singer Anita Bryant, in 1977. Now a celebrity is leading the charge to get rid of it.
Television entertainer Rosie O'Donnell, a part-time resident of Miami Beach, appeared on ABC's Prime Time Thursday to express her opposition to the law. She recently disclosed publicly that she is a lesbian who has adopted three children in New York.
"I don't think America knows what a gay parent looks like. I am the gay parent. America has watched me parent my children on TV for six years. They know what kind of a parent I am," she said during the ABC appearance.
She said she was drawn into the fray by the case of Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau, two former hospital nurses who are among five plaintiffs in the federal suit. They are foster parents of a 10-year-old boy and want to adopt him.
Simon said he has been warned there may be a hearing soon on whether to remove the boy from the home.
Florida, Mississippi and Utah are the only three states to ban adoption by gay couples. They are allowed to be foster parents in Florida.
